A new drug from the drug company Roche has been given the nod by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to improve the treatment of patients suffering from a kind of cancer of the blood and bone marrow.

Roche is calling the new medicine Gazyva which is meant to fight chronic lymphocytic leukemia along with added treatment with chemotherapy. It is meant for those patients who have never before been treated for the same.

Gazyva provides relief in this cancer by destroying cancer cells and enabling the natural immune system of the body to fight against them.

The FDA gave its approval to Gazyva after proof that the drug along with chemotherapy was a better treatment to chemotherapy alone in slowing the progress of the cancer cells.

It was also seen that cancer patients who got treatment from Gazyva combined with chemotherapy had a higher survival rate with 23 months before death, relapse or spreading of the cancer cells.

Earlier treatments treated only with chemotherapy only got 11.1 months.